Ashcroft industrial land considered as container storage and distribution centre

Thursday, February 28, 2013

By Kelly Sinoski, Vancouver Sun

Metro Vancouver’s port, rail, and trucking officials have scheduled a fact-finding missing to the village of Ashcroft to gauge its suitability as the site of a potential inland distribution park for Asia-Pacific container traffic.

The mission, slated for April 9, will focus on the Ashcroft Terminal site, just outside the village on the Thompson River. It will also include Delta Mayor Lois Jackson, who has been pushing Port Metro Vancouver to find other locations for port-related activities so it doesn’t turn to agricultural land in Metro Vancouver.

Ashcroft Terminal lies about 350 kmnorth of Vancouver, just off the Trans-Canada Highway. The Ashcroft Terminal website describes itself as “the last, large materials transloading industrial site in British Columbia, before entering the congestion of the Lower Mainland.”

With Asia-Pacific container traffic expected to increase 300 per cent by 2020, the website said, the terminal is expected to cut down on increased congestion and costs in Metro Vancouver, by putting goods — such as lumber, pulp, steel or other bulk commodities — into containers, or storage, at the Ashcroft Terminal before they’re hauled by train or truck to their destination.

This would apply to goods coming from the north or Alberta for export at the coast, or vice-versa, with goods loaded straight from a ship onto a rail line rather than sitting on expensive waterfront.

Ashcroft Terminal is the meeting point of both the Canadian National and Canadian Pacific trains, with up to 57 CP and CN trains travelling through the site each day.

Jackson regards the Ashcroft Terminal site, which is privately owned, as potentially viable because it has about 300 acres of industrial land.

Metro Vancouver recently sent a letter to the federal government, asking that it ban Port Metro Vancouver from using the region’s agricultural land for port-related uses.

The port, which holds large parcels of agricultural land such as the former 200-acre Gilmore Farm in Richmond, maintains farmland is being held as a safety buffer because there’s no industrial land left.

“I want to do whatever I can to make sure we aren’t going to be using any more farmland around the port more than we have to,” Jackson said. “Is it possible? I don’t know but we’re going to try.”

In a letter to B.C.’s transportation minister sent last year, the Thompson-Nicola Regional District said Ashcroft Terminal is “uniquely positioned” as a distribution centre. “The Ashcroft land does not require the removal of 600 acres of prime land from the ALR as does the Delta-Vancouver area project,” the letter states.

Peter Xotta, vice-president of operations for Port Metro Vancouver, said the port is interested in investigating “anything that improves efficiency of the supply chain and has a beneficial effect on our competitiveness or capacity as a gateway.”

But he couldn’t say at this time whether such a move would be the answer, noting the success of the site depends on the individual shipping lines, trucking companies and other players coming together.

“It’s really about the self-interest of those stakeholders,” Xotta said.

Xotta noted the port is expected to continue to grow but he sees the terminal proposal as a complement to the Metro Vancouver system rather than a replacement.

The site, he said, has “a challenge of being not close enough to participate in some of the activity that happens in parts of the Lower Mainland and too close to participate in others.”

Ashcroft Mayor Andy Anderson, who has been pushing to turn the area into an intermodal since he was elected eight years ago, said he’s hopeful players will start to take notice, as the move would bring much-needed jobs to the area.

“It’s been my platform to get the economics of the region going,” he said.